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“Thank you,” Oliver was saying. He hung up and turned to them. “They’ll be here soon. The police station isn’t far away.”
“Where is she?” Zoey asked.
“Where is who?” Charlotte said.
“Lucy.”
Even Sam stopped screaming at that.
They all looked around and realized that Lucy was gone.
Sam’s screams amped back up when Oliver left the others to walk around the garden to check on Lucy. The dellawisps were shooting in and out of the trees like bottle rockets, alarmed.
He stepped onto Lucy’s dark patio, but then stopped and spun around.
He’d just had the strangest sensation his mother was right behind him. He even put his hand to his hair, as if she’d touched him, which was odd because she never used to touch him.
He suddenly remembered a particular conversation he’d had with his therapist in college. She’d asked him, “What would you say to your mother if she were here?”
He’d answered, “It wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t listen.”
“This isn’t about her. This is about you. What would you say?”
He’d thought about all the things he’d already said. The questions he’d already asked. He’d realized then that wanting something she could never give was only ever going to hurt him. He had to focus on what he had to do to move on.
“I would say goodbye.”
“You didn’t say goodbye when you left?” his therapist had asked.
“I think I said something like, ‘Well, I’m leaving now.’”
“Why didn’t you say goodbye?”
“I kept thinking that if I just waited a little while longer, she would change.”
The moonlight cast ghostly shadows around him, moving and rolling in the ocean breeze.
He put his hand to his hair again.Hadshe changed?
He shook himself out of it and turned back to knock on Lucy’s door.
It took a long time for her to answer.
But finally the door opened.
And somewhere far away, another door closed.
Chapter Twenty
When Lucy had gotten back to her condo, she’d barely made it to her creaky papasan chair before her legs had given out from under her. She’d taken out a cigarette, and the bright spark of her lighter illuminated the photos of Oliver that Zoey had given her, spread out on the TV tray beside the chair.
Night and day, she spent most of her time here, watching the garden. At first it had been so she could watch Oliver without Lizbeth knowing. But after Oliver had left, it simply became habit.
She’d been aware of the woman, Sam, for weeks now. She would watch Sam pick her way into Lizbeth’s place late every night, probably to sleep, which was why Lucy hadn’t been too concerned at first. She’d even felt a certain sympathy for the woman. Before prison, Lucy had become homeless every time her mother had kicked her out for using. She’d assumed Sam had stumbled upon the Della- wisp by happenstance, found Lizbeth’s condo empty, and decided it wouldn’t do any harm to have a roof over her head for a while. Lucyhad done the same thing. She’d once had an eerie sixth sense for finding empty houses on the island to crash in.
Sam had disappeared when the new keypad lock had been put on the gate. But a few hours ago, she’d reappeared as Frasier had left, catching the gate before it closed. And as Lucy had watched Sam lurk in the dark near the hippie girl’s place, an uneasiness had lifted the hair on her arms.
Sam had looked furious. Seeing happiness did that to some people. Money, a place to live, transportation to get you where you were going—these were all sources of envy to someone with none of these things. But nothing,nothing,could make someone who didn’t have anything angrier than witnessing actual happiness.
